Star Hunter by Andre Norton

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Title: Star Hunter

Author: Andre Alice Norton

Release Date: August 21, 2006 [EBook #19090]

Language: English

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Cover page

STAR HUNTER

ANDRE NORTON

ACE BOOKS, INC.

1120 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10036

Copyright, 1961, by Ace Books, Inc.

STAR HUNTER

I

Nahuatl's larger moon pursued the smaller, greenish globe of its companion across a cloudless sky in which the stars
made a speckled pattern like the scales of a huge serpent coiled around a black bowl. Ras Hume paused at the border
of scented spike-flowers on the top terrace of the Pleasure House to wonder why he thought of serpents. He
understood. Mankind's age-old hatred, brought from his native planet to the distant stars, was evil symbolized by a coil
in a twisted, belly-path across the ground. And on Nahuatl, as well as a dozen other worlds, Wass was the serpent.

A night wind was rising, stirring the exotic, half-dozen other worlds' foliage planted cunningly on the terrace to simulate
the mystery of an off-world jungle.

"Hume?" The inquiry seemed to come out of thin air over his head.

"Hume," he repeated his own name calmly.

A shaft of light brilliant enough to dazzle the eyes struck through the massed vegetation, revealing a path. Hume lingered
for a moment, offering a counterstroke of indifference in what he had always known would be a test of wits. Wass was
Veep of a shadowy empire, but that was apart from the world in which Ras Hume moved.

He strode deliberately down the corridor illuminated between leaf and blossom walls. A grotesque lump of crystal
leered at him from the heart of a tharsala lilly bed. The intricate carving of a devilish nonhuman set of features was a
work of alien art. Tendrils of smoke curled from the thing's flat nostrils, and Hume sniffed the scent of a narcotic he
recognized. He smiled. Such measures might soften up the usual civ Wass interviewed here. But a star pilot turned out-
hunter was immunized against such mind clouding.

There was a door, the lintel and posts of which had more carving, but this time Terran, Hume thought—old, very old.
Perhaps rumor was right, Milfors Wass might be truly native Terran and not second, third, nor fourth generation star
stock as most of those who reached Nahuatl were.

The room beyond that elaborately carved entrance was, in contrast, severe. Rust walls were bare of any pattern save
an oval disk of cloudy golden shimmer behind the chair at the long table of solid ruby rock from Nahuatl's poisonous
sister planet of Xipe. Without a pause he walked to the chair and seated himself without invitation to wait in the empty
room.

That clouded oval might be a com device. Hume refused to look at it after his first glance. This interview was to be
person to person. If Wass did not appear within a reasonable length of time he would leave.

And Hume hoped to any unseen watcher he presented the appearance of a man not impressed by stage settings. After
all he was now in the seller's space boots, and it was a seller's market.

Ras Hume rested his right hand on the table. Against the polished glow of the stone, the substance of it was flesh-tanned
brown—a perfect match for his left. And the subtle difference between true flesh and false was no hindrance in the use
of those fingers or their strength. Save that it had pushed him out of command of a cargo-cum-liner and hurled him
down from the pinnacle of a star pilot. There were bitter brackets about his mouth, set there by that hand as deeply as if
carved with a knife.

It had been four years—planet time—since he had lifted the Rigal Rover from the launch pad on Sargon Two. He had
suspected it might be a tricky voyage with young Tors Wazalitz, who was a third owner of the Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz
line, and a Gratz chewer. But one did not argue with the owners, except when the safety of the ship was concerned.
The Rigal Rover had made a crash landing at Alexbut, and a badly injured pilot had brought her in by will, hope and a
faith he speedily lost.

He received a plasta-hand, the best the medical center could supply and a pension for life, forced by the public acclaim
for a man who had saved ships and lives. Then—the sack because a crazed Tors Wazalitz was dead. They dared not
try to stick Hume with a murder charge; the voyage record tapes had been shot straight through to the Patrol Council,
and the evidence on those could be neither faked nor tampered with. They could not give him a quick punishment, but
they could try to arrange a slow death. The word had gone out that Hume was off pilot boards. They had tried to keep
him out of space.

And they might have done it, too, had he been the usual type of pilot, knowing only his trade. But some odd streak of
restlessness had always led him to apply for the rim runs, the very first flights to newly opened worlds. Outside of the
survey men, there were few qualified pilots of his seniority who possessed such a wide and varied knowledge of the
galactic frontiers.

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So when he learned that the ships' boards were irrevocably closed to him, Hume had signed up with the Out-Hunters'
Guild. There was a vast difference between lifting a liner from a launching pad and guiding civ hunters to worlds
surveyed and staked out for their trips into the wild. Hume relished the exploration part—he disliked the leading-by-
the-hand of nine-tenths of the Guild's clients.

But if he had not been in the Guild service he would never have made that find on Jumala. That lucky, lucky find!
Hume's plasta-flesh fingers curved, their nails drew across the red surface of the table. And where was Wass? He was
about to rise and go when the golden oval on the wall smoked, its substance thinning to a mist as a man stepped through
to the floor.

The newcomer was small compared to the former pilot, but he had breadth of shoulder which made the upper part of
his torso overbalance his thin hips and legs. He was dressed most conservatively except for a jeweled plaque resting on
the tightly stretched gray silk of his upper tunic at heart level. Unlike Hume he wore no visible arms belt, but the other
did not doubt that there were a number of devices concealed in that room to counter the efforts of any assassin.

The man from the mirror spoke with a flat, toneless voice. His black hair had been shaven well above his ears, the locks
left on top of his skull trained into a kind of bird's crest. As Hume, his visible areas of flesh were deeply browned, but
by nature rather than exposure to space, the pilot guessed. His features were harsh, with a prominent nose, a back-
slanting forehead, eyes dark, long and large, with heavy lids.

"Now—" He spread both his hands, palm down and flat on the table, a gesture Hume found himself for some unknown
reason copying. "You have a proposition?"

But the pilot was not to be hurried, any more than he was to be influenced by Wass' stage-settings.

"I have an idea," he corrected.

"There are many ideas." Wass leaned back in his chair, but he did not remove his hands from the table. "Perhaps one in
a thousand is the kernel of something useful. For the rest, there is no need to trouble a man."

"Agreed," Hume returned evenly. "But that one idea in a thousand can also pay off in odds of a million to one, when and
if a man has it."

"And you have such a one?"

"I have such a one." It was Hume's role now to impress the other by his unshakable confidence. He had studied all the
possibilities. Wass was the right man, perhaps the only partner he could find. But Wass must not know that.

"On Jumala?" Wass returned.

If that stare and statement was intended to rattle Hume it was a wasted shot. To discover that he had just returned from
that frontier planet required no ingenuity on the Veep's part.

"Perhaps."

"Come, Out-Hunter Hume. We are both busy men, this is no time to play tricks with words and hints. Either you have
made a find worth the attention of my organization or you have not. Let me be the judge."

This was it—the corner of no return. But Wass had his own code. The Veep had established his tight control of his
lawless organization by set rules, and one of them was, don't be greedy. Wass was never greedy, which is why the
patrol had never been able to pull him down, and those who dealt with him did not talk. If you had a good thing, and
Wass accepted temporary partnership, he kept his side of the bargain rigidly. You did the same—or regretted your
stupidity.

"A claimant to the Kogan estate—that good enough for you?"

Wass showed no surprise. "And how would such a claimant be profitable to us?"

Hume appreciated that "us"; he had an in now. "If you supply the claimant, surely you can claim a reward, in more ways
than one."

"True. But one does not produce a claimant out of a Krusha dream. The investigation for any such claim now would be
made by a verity lab and no imposture will pass those tests. While a real claimant would not need your help or mine."

"Depends upon the claimant."

"One you discovered on Jumala?"

"No." Hume shook his head slowly. "I found something else on Jumala—an L-B from Largo Drift intact and in good
shape. From the evidence now in existence it could have landed there with survivors aboard."

"And the evidence of such survivors living on—that exists also?"

Hume shrugged, his plasta-flesh fingers flexed slightly. "It has been six planet years, there is a forest where the L-B
rests. No, no evidence at present."

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"The Largo Drift," Wass repeated slowly, "carrying, among others, Gentlefem Tharlee Kogan Brodie."

"And her son Rynch Brodie, who was at the time of the Largo Drift's disappearance a boy of fourteen."

"You have indeed made a find." Wass gave that simple statement enough emphasis to assure Hume he had won. His
one-in-a-thousand idea had been absorbed, was now being examined, amplified, broken down into details he could
never have hoped to manage for himself, by the most cunning criminal brain in at least five solar systems.

"Is there any hope of survivors?" Wass attacked the problem straight on.

"No evidence even of there being any passengers when the L-B planeted. Those are automatic and released a certain
number of seconds after an accident alarm. For what it's worth the hatch of this one was open. It could have brought in
survivors. But I was on Jumala for three months with a full Guild crew and we found no sign of any castaways."

"So you propose—?"

"On the basis of my report Jumala has been put up for a safari choice. The L-B could well be innocently discovered by
a client. Every one knows the story with the case dragging through the Ten Sector-Terran Courts now. Gentlefem
Brodie and her son might not have been news ten years ago. Now, with a third of the Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz control
going to them, any find linked with the Largo Drift would gain full galactic coverage."

"You have a choice of survivor? The Gentlefem?"

Hume shook his head. "The boy. He was bright, according to the stories since, and he would have the survival manual
from the ship to study. He could have grown up in the wilds of an unopened planet. To use a woman is too tricky."

"You are entirely right. But we shall require an extremely clever imposter."

"I think not." Hume's cool glance met Wass'. "We only need a youth of the proper general physical description and the
use of a conditioner."

Wass' expression did not change, there was no sign that Hume's hint had struck home. But when he replied there was a
slight change in the monotone of his voice.

"You seem to know a great deal."

"I am a man who listens," Hume replied, "and I do not always discount rumor as mere fantasy."

"That is true. As one of the guild you would be interested in the root of fact beneath the plant of fiction," Wass
acknowledged. "You appear to have done some planning on your own."

"I have waited and watched for just such an opportunity as this," Hume answered.

"Ah, yes. The Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz combine incurred your displeasure. I see you are also a man who does not forget
easily. And that, too, I understand. It is a foible of my own, Out-Hunter. I neither forget nor forgive my enemies, though
I may seem to do so and time separates them from their past deeds for a space."

Hume accepted that warning—both must keep any bargain. Wass was silent for a moment, as if to leave time for the
thought to root itself, then he spoke again.

"A youth with the proper physical qualifications. Have you any such in mind?"

"I think so." Hume was short.

"He will need certain memories; those take time to tape."

"Those dealing with Jumala, I can supply."

"Yes. You will have to provide a tape beginning with his arrival on that world. For such family material as is necessary I
shall have ready. An interesting project, even apart from its value to us. This is one to intrigue experts."

Expert psycho-techs—Wass had them. Men who had slipped over the border of the law, had entered Wass'
organization and prospered there. There were some techs crooked enough to enjoy such a project for its own sake,
indulging in forbidden experimentation. For a moment, but only for a moment, something in Hume jibbed at the intent of
carrying through his plan. Then he shrugged that tinge aside.

"How soon do you wish to move?"

"How long will preparation take?" Hume asked in return, for the second time battling a taste of concern.

"Three months, maybe four. There's research to be done and tapes to be made."

"It will be six months probably before the Guild sets up a safari for Jumala."

Wass smiled. "That need not worry us. When the time comes for a safari, there shall also be clients, impeccable clients,
asking for it to be planned."

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There would be, too, Hume knew. Wass' influence reached into places where the Veep himself was totally unknown.
Yes, he could count on an excellent, well above suspicion, set of clients to discover Rynch Brodie when the time came.

"I can deliver the boy tonight, or early tomorrow morning. Where?"

"You are sure of your selection?"

"He fulfills the requirements, the right age, general appearance. A boy who will not be missed, who has no kin, no ties,
and who will drop out of sight without any questions to be asked."

"Very well. Get him at once. Deliver him here."

Wass swept one hand across the table surface. On the red of the stone there glowed for seconds an address. Hume
noted it, nodded. It was one in the center of the port town, one which could be visited at an odd hour without exciting
any curiosity. He rose.

"He will be there."

"Tomorrow, at your convenience," Wass added, "you will come to this place." Again the palm moved and a second
address showed on the table.

"There you will begin your tape for our use. It may take several sessions."

"I'm ready. I still have the long report to make to the Guild, so the material is still available on my note tapes."

"Excellent. Out-Hunter Hume, I salute a new colleague." At last Wass' right hand came up from the table. "May we
both have luck equal to our industry."

"Luck to equal our desires," Hume corrected him.

"A very telling phrase, Out-Hunter. Luck to equal our desires. Yes, let us both deserve that."

2

The Starfall was a long way down scale from the pleasure houses of the upper town. Here strange vices were also
merchandise, but not such exotics as Wass provided. This was strictly for crewmen of the star freighters who could be
speedily and expertly separated from a voyage's pay in an evening. The tantalizing scents of Wass' terraces were
reduced here to simply smells, the majority of which were not fragrant.

There had already been two fatal duels that evening. A tubeman from a rim ship had challenged a space miner to settle a
difference with those vicious whips made from the tail casings of Flangoid flying lizards, an encounter which left both
men in ribbons, one dead, one dying. And a scarred, ex-space marine had blaster-flamed one of the Star-and-Comet
dealers into charred human ash.

The young man who had been ordered to help clear away the second loser retired to the stinking alley outside to lose
the meal which was part of his meager day's pay. Now he crawled back inside, his face greenish, one hand pressed to
his middle section.

He was thin, the fine bones of his face tight under the pallid skin, his ribs showing even through the sleazy fabric of the
threadbare tunic with its house seal. When he leaned his head back against the grime encrusted wall, raising his face to
the light, his hair had the glint of bright chestnut, a gold which was also red. And for his swamper's labor he was almost
fastidiously clean.

"You—Lansor!"

He shivered as if an icy wind had found him and opened his eyes. They seemed disproportionately large in his skin and
bone face and were of an odd shade, neither green nor blue, but somewhere between.

"Get going, you! Ain't paying out good credits for you to sit there like you was buying on your own!" The Salarkian who
loomed above him spoke accentless, idiomatic Basic Space which came strangely from between his yellow lips. A
furred hand thrust the handle of a mop-up stick at the young man, a taloned thumb jerked the direction in which to use
that evil-smelling object. Vye Lansor levered himself up the wall, took the mop, setting his teeth grimly.

Someone had spilled a mug of Kardo and the deep purple liquid was already patterning the con-stone floor past any
hope of cleaning. But he set to work slapping the fringe of the noisome mop back and forth to sop up what he could.
The smell of the Kardo uniting with the general effluvia of the room and its inhabitants heightened his queasiness.

Working blindly in a half stupor, he was not aware of the man sitting alone in the booth until his mop spattered the ankle
of one of the drinking girls. She struck him sharply across the face with a sputtering curse in the tongue of Altar-Ishtar.

The blow sent him back against the open lattice of the booth. As he tried to steady himself another hand reached up,

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fingers tightened about his wrist. He flinched, tried to jerk away from that hold, only to discover that he was the other's
prisoner.

And looking down at his captor in apprehension, he was aware even then of the different quality of this man. The patron
wore the tunic of a crewman, lighter patches where the ship's badges should have been to show that he was not
engaged. But, though his tunic was shabby, dirty, his magnetic boots scuffed and badly worn, he was not like the others
now enjoying the pleasures of the Starfall.

"This one—he makes trouble?" The vast bulk of the Vorm-man who was the Starfall's private law moved through the
crowd with serene confidence in his own strength, which no one there, unless blind, deaf, and out-of-the-senses drunk,
could dispute. His scaled, six-fingered, claw hand reached out for Lansor and the boy cringed.

"No trouble!" There was the click of authority in the voice of the man in the booth. His face, moments earlier taut and
sharp with intelligence, was suddenly slack, his tone slurred as he answered: "Looks like an old shipmate. No trouble,
just want a drink with an old shipmate."

But the grip which had pulled Vye forward, swung him around and down on the other bench in the booth, was anything
but slack. The Vorm-man glanced from the patron of the Starfall to its least important employee and then grinned,
thrusting his fanged jaws close to Lansor's.

"If the master wants to drink, you dirt-rat, you drink!"

Vye nodded vigorously, and then put his hand to his mouth, afraid his stomach was about to betray him again.
Apprehensive, he watched the Vorm-man turn away. Only when that broad, green-gray back was lost in the smoky far
reaches of the room did he expel his breath again.

"Here—" The grip was gone from his wrist, but fingers now put a mug into his hand. "Drink!"

He tried to protest, knew it was hopeless, and used both hands to get the mug to his lips, mouthing the stinging liquid in
dull despair. Only, instead of bringing nausea with it, the stuff settled his stomach, cleared his head, with an after glow
with which he managed to relax from the tense state of endurance which filled his hours in the Starfall.

Half of the mug's contents inside him and he dared to raise his eyes to the man opposite him. Yes, this was no common
crewman, nor was he drunk as he had pretended for the Vorm-man. Now he watched the milling crowd with a kind of
detachment, though Vye was sure he was aware of every move he himself made.

Vye finished the liquid. For the first time since he had come into this place two months earlier he felt like a real person
again. And he had wits enough to guess that the potion he had just swallowed contained some drug. Only now he did
not care at all. Anything which could wipe out in moments all the shame, fear, and sick despair the Starfall had planted
in him was worth swallowing. Why the other had drugged him was a mystery, but he was content to wait for
enlightenment.

Lansor's companion once more applied that compelling pressure to the younger man's bony forearm. Linked by that
hold they left the Starfall, came into the cooler, far more pleasant atmosphere of the street. They were a block away
before Vye's guide halted, though he did not release his prisoner.

"Forty names of Dugor!" he spat.

Lansor waited, breathing in the air of early morning. The confidence of the drug still held. At the moment he was certain
nothing could be as bad as the life behind him, he was willing to face what this strange patron of the Starfall had in mind.

The other slapped his hand down on an air-car call button, stood waiting until one of the city flitters landed on beam
before them.

From the seat of the air-car Vye noted they were heading into the respectability of the upper city, away from the stews
ringing the launch port. He tried to guess their destination or purpose, not that either mattered much. Then the car
descended on a landing stage.

The stranger waved Lansor through a doorway, down a short corridor into a room of private quarters. Vye sat down
gingerly on the foam seat extending from the wall as he neared. He stared about. Dimly he could just remember rooms
which had this degree of comfort, but so dimly now he could not be sure they did not exist only in his vivid imagination.
For Vye's imagination had buoyed him first through the drab existence in a State Child's Crèche, then through a state-
found job which he had lost because he could not adapt to the mechanical life of a computer tender, and had been an
anchor and an escape when he had sunk through the depths of the port to the last refuge in the Starfall.

Now he pressed both his hands into the soft stuff of the seat and gaped at a small tri-dee on the wall facing him, a
miniature scene of life on some other planet wherein a creature enveloped in short black and white striped fur crept
belly flat, to stalk long-legged, short-winged birds making blood-red splotches against yellow reed banks under a pale
violet sky. He feasted on its color, on the sense of freedom and off-world wonders which it raised in him.

"Who are you?"

The stranger's abrupt question brought him back, not only to the room but to his own precarious position. He moistened

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his lips, no longer quite so aglow with confidence.

"Vye—Vye Lansor." Then he added his other identification, "S. C. C. 425061."

"State child, eh?" The other had pushed a button for a refresher cup, then was sipping its contents slowly. He did not
ring for a second to offer Vye. "Parents?"

Lansor shook his head. "I was brought in after the Five-Hour Fever epidemic. They didn't try to keep records, there
were too many of us."

The man was watching him levelly over the rim of that cup. There was something cold in that study, something which
curbed Vye's pleasant feeling of only moments earlier. Now the other set down his drink, crossed the room. Cupping
his hand under Lansor's chin, he brought up his head in a way which stirred a sullen resentment in the younger man, yet
something told him resistance would only bring trouble.

"I'd say Terran stock—not more than second generation." He was talking to himself more than to Vye. He loosed his
hold on the boy's chin, but he still stood there surveying him from head to foot. Lansor wanted to squirm, but he fought
that impulse, and managed to meet the other's gaze when it reached his face again.

"No—not the usual port-drift. I was right all the way." Now he looked at Vye again as if the younger man did have a
brain, emotions, some call on his interest as a personality. "Want a job?"

Lansor pressed his hand deeper into the foam seat. "What—what kind?" He was angry and ashamed at that small
betraying break in his voice.

"You have scruples?" The stranger appeared to think that amusing. Vye reddened, but he was also more than a little
surprised that the man in the worn space uniform had read hesitancy right. Someone out of the Starfall should not be too
particular about employment, and he could not tell why he was.

"Nothing illegal, I assure you." The man crossed to set his refresher cup in the empty slot. "I am an Out-Hunter."

Lansor blinked. This had all taken on some of the fantastic aura of a dream. The other was eyeing him impatiently, as if
he had expected some reaction.

"You may inspect my credentials if you wish."

"I believe you," Vye found his voice.

"I happen to need a gearman."

But this wasn't happening! Of course, it couldn't happen to him, Vye Lansor, state child, swamper in the Starfall. Things
such as this did not happen, except in a thaline dream, and he wasn't a smoke eater! It was the kind of dream a man
didn't want to wake from, not if he was port-drift.

"Would you be willing to sign on?"

Vye tried to clutch reality to himself, to remain level-headed. A gearman for an Out-Hunter! Why five men out of six
would pay a large premium for a chance at such rating. The chill of doubt cut through the first hazy rosiness. A swamper
from a port-side dive simply did not become a gearman for a Guild Hunter.

Again it was as if the stranger read his thoughts. "Look here," he spoke abruptly. "I had a bad time myself, years ago.
You resemble someone to whom I owe a debt. I can't repay him, but I can make the scales a little even this way."

"Make the scales even." Vye's fading hope brightened. Then the Out-Hunter was a follower of the Fata Rite. That
would explain everything. If you could not repay a good deed to the one you owed, you must balance the Eternal
Scales in another fashion. He relaxed again, a great many of his unasked questions so answered.

"You will accept?"

Vye nodded eagerly. "Yes, Out-Hunter." He still could not believe that this was happening.

The other pressed the refresher button, and this time he handed Lansor the brimming cup. "Drink on the bargain." His
words had the ring of command.

Lansor drank, gulping down the contents of the cup, and suddenly was aware of being tired. He leaned back against the
wall, his eyes closed.

Ras Hume took the cup from the lax fingers of the young man. So far, very good. Chance appeared to be playing on his
side of the board. It had been chance which had steered him into the Starfall just three nights ago when he had been in
quest of his imposter. And Vye Lansor was better than he dared hope to find. The boy had the right coloring, he had
been batted around enough to fall for the initial story, he was malleable now. And after Wass' techs worked on him he
would be Rynch Brodie—heir to one-third of Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz!

"Come!" He touched Vye on the shoulder. The boy opened his eyes but his gaze did not focus as he got slowly to his
feet. Hume glanced at his planet-time watch. It was still very early; the chance he must run in getting Lansor out of this

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building was small if they went at once. Guiding the younger man with a light hold above the elbow, he walked him out
back to the flitter landing stage. The air-car was waiting. Hume's sense of being a gambler facing a run of good luck
grew as he shepherded the boy into the flitter, punched a cover destination and took off.

On another street he transferred himself and his charge into a second air-car, set the destination to within a block of the
address Wass had given him. Not much later he walked Vye into a small lobby with a discreet list of names posted in its
rack. No occupations attached to those colored streamers Hume noted. This meant either that their owners represented
luxury trades, where a name signified the profession or service, or that they were covers—perhaps both. Wass' world
fringed many different circles, intermingled with some quite surprising professions dedicated to the comfort, pleasure or
health of the idle rich, off-world nobility, and the criminal elite.

Hume fingered the right call button, knowing that the thumb pattern he had left on Wass' conference table would have
already been relayed as his symbol of admission here. A flicker of light winked below the name, the wall to the right
shimmered, and produced a doorway. Steering Vye to it, Hume nodded to the man waiting there. He was a flat-faced
Eucorian of the servant caste, and now he reached out to draw Lansor over the threshold.

"I have him, gentlehomo." His voice was as expressionless as his face. There was another shimmer and the door
disappeared.

Hume brushed his hand down the outer side of his thigh, wiping flesh against the coarse stuff of the crew uniform. He
left the lobby frowning at his own thoughts.

Stupid! A swamper from one of the worst rat holes in the port. Like as not that youngster would have had his brains
kicked out in a brawl, or been fried to a crisp when some drunk got wild with a blaster, before the year was out. He'd
done him a real kindness, given him a chance at a future less than one man in a billion ever had the power to even dream
about. Why, if Vye Lansor had known what was going to happen to him, he would have been so willing to volunteer,
that he would have dragged Hume here. There was no reason to have any regrets over the boy, he had never had it so
good—never! There was only one small period of risk for Vye to face. Those days he would have to spend alone on
Jumala between the time Wass' organization would plant him there and the coming of Hume's party to "discover" him.
Hume himself would tape every possible aid to cover that period. All the knowledge of a Guild Out-Hunter, added to
the information gathered by the survey, would be used to provide Rynch Brodie with the training necessary for
wilderness survival. Hume was already listing the items to be included as he strode down the street, his tread once more
assured.

3

His head ached dully, of that he was conscious first. As he turned, without opening his eyes, he felt the brush of softness
against his cheek, and a pungent odor fill his nostrils.

He opened his eyes, stared up past a rim of broken rock toward the cloudless, blue-green sky. A relay clicked into
proper place deep in his mind.

Of course! He had been trying to lure a strong-jaws out of its traphole with hooked bait, then his foot had slipped.
Rynch Brodie sat up, flexed his bare thin arms, and moved his long legs experimentally. No broken bones, anyway. But
still he frowned. Odd—that dream which jarred with the here and now.

Crawling to the side of the creek, he dipped head and shoulders into the water, letting the chill of the stream flush away
some of his waking bewilderment. He shook himself, making the drops fly from his uncovered torso and arms, and then
discovered his hunting tackle.

He stood for a moment fingering each piece of his scanty clothing, recalling every piece of labor or battle which had
added pouch, belt, strip of fabric to his equipment. Yet—there was still that odd sense of strangeness, as if none of this
was really his.

Rynch shook his head, wiped his wet face with his arm. It was all his, that was sure, every bit of it. He'd been lucky, the
survival manual on the L-B had furnished him with general directions and this was a world which was not unfriendly—
not if one was prepared for trouble.

He climbed up and loosened the net, coiling its folds into one hand, taking the good spear in his other. A bush stirred
ahead, against the pull of the light breeze. Rynch froze, then the haft of his spear slid into a new hand grip, the coils of
his net spun out. A snarl cut over the purr of water.

The scarlet blot which sprang for his throat was met with the flail of the net. Rynch stabbed twice at the creature he had
so swept off balance. A water-cat, this year's cub. Dying, its claws, over-long in proportion to its paws, drew inch deep
furrows in the earth and gravel. Its eyes, almost the same shade as its long, burr-entangled body fur, glared up at him in
deathly enmity.

As Rynch watched, that feeling that he was studying something strange, utterly alien, came to him once again. Yet he

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had hunted water-cats for many seasons. Fortunately they were solitary, evil-tempered beasts that marked out a
roaming territory to defend it from others of their kind, and not too many were to be encountered in cross-country
travel.

He stooped to pull his net from the now still paws. Some definite place he must reach. The compulsion to move on in
that sudden flash shook him, raised the dull ache still troubling his temples into a punishing throb. Going down on his
knees, Rynch once more turned to the stream water; this time after splashing it onto his face, he drank from his cupped
hands.

Rynch swayed, his wet hands over his eyes, digging fingertips into the skin of his forehead to ease that pain bursting in
his skull. Sitting in a room, drinking from a cup—it was as if a shadow picture fitted over the reality of the stream, rocks
and brush about him. He had sat in a room, had drank from a cup—that action had been important!

A sharp, hot pain made him lose contact with that shadow. He looked down. From the gravel, from under rocks,
gathered an army of blue-black, hard-shelled things, their clawed forelimbs extended, blue sense organs raised on fleshy
stalks well above their heads, all turned towards the dead feline.

Rynch slapped out vigorously, stumbled into the water loosening the hold of two vicious scavengers on the torn skin of
his ankle when he waded out knee-deep. Already that black tongue of small bodies licked across the red-haired side of
the hunter. Within minutes the corpse would be only well-cleaned bones.

Retrieving his spear and net, Rynch immersed both in the water to clean off attackers, and hurried on, splashing through
the creek until he was well away from the vicinity of the kill. A little later he flushed a four-footed creature from between
two rocks and killed it with one blow from his spear haft. He skinned his kill, feeling the substance of the skill. Was it
exceedingly rough hide, or rudimentary scales? And knew a return of that puzzlement.

He felt, he thought painfully as he toasted the dry looking, grayish meat on a sharpened stick, as if a part of him knew
very well what manner of animal he had killed. And yet, far inside him, another person he could not understand stood
aloof watching in amazement.

He was Rynch Brodie, and he had been traveling on the Largo Drift with his mother.

Memory presented him automatically with a picture of a thin woman with a narrow, rather unhappy face, a twist of
elaborately dressed hair in which jeweled lights sparkled. There had been something bad—memory was no longer
exact but chaotic. And his head ached as he tried to recall that time with greater clarity. Afterwards the L-B and a man
with him in it—

"Simmons Tait!"

An officer, badly hurt. He had died when the L-B landed here. Rynch had a clear memory of himself piling rocks over
Tait's twisted body. He had been alone then with only the survival manual and some of the L-B supplies. The important
thing was that he must never forget he was Rynch Brodie.

He licked grease from his fingers. The ache in his head made him drowsy. He curled up on a patch of sun-warmed sand
and slept.

Or did he? His eyes were open again. Now the sky above him was no longer a bowl of light, but rather a muted halo of
evening. Rynch sat up, his heart pounding as if he had been racing to outdistance the rising wind now pushing against his
half-naked body.

What was he doing here? Where was here?

Panic, carried through from that awakening, dried his mouth, roughened his skin, made wet the palms of the hands he
dug into the sand on either side of him. Vaguely, a picture projected into his mind—he had sat in a room, and watched
a man come to him with a cup. Before that, he had been in a place of garish light and evil smells.

But he was Rynch Brodie, he had come here on an L-B when he was a boy, he had buried the ship's officer under a
pile of rocks, managed to survive by himself because he had applied the aids in the boat to learn how. This morning he
had been hunting a strong-jaw, tempting it out of its hiding by a hook and line and a bait of fresh killed skipper.

Rynch's hands went to his face, he crouched forward on his knees. That all was true, he could prove it—he would
prove it! There was the strong-jaw's den back there, somewhere on the rise where he had left the snapped haft of the
spear he had broken in his fall. If he could find the den, then he would be sure of the reality of everything else.

He had only had a very real dream—that was it! Only, why did he continue to dream of that room, that man, and the
cup? Of the place of lights and smells, which he hated so much that the hate was a sour taste in his fright-dried mouth?
None of it had ever been a part of Rynch Brodie's world.

Through the dusk he started back up the stream bed, towards the narrow little valley where he had wakened after that
fall. Finally, finding shelter within the heart of a bush, he crouched low, listening to the noises of another world which
awoke at night to take over the stage from the day dwellers.

As he plodded back, he fought off panic, realizing that some of those noises he could identify with confidence, while

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others remained mysteries. He bit down hard on the knuckles of his clenched fist, attempting to bend that discovery into
evidence. Why did he know at once that that thin, eerie wailing was the flock call of a leather-winged, feathered tree
dweller, and that a coughing grunt from downstream was just a noise?

"Rynch Brodie—Largo Drift—Tait." He tasted the blood his teeth drew from his own skin as he recited that formula.
Then he scrambled up. His feet tangled in the net, and he went down again, his head cracking on a protruding root.

Nothing tangible reached him in that brush shelter. What did venture out of hiding to investigate was a substance none of
his species could have named. It was neither body, nor mind—perhaps it was closest to alien emotion.

Making contact stealthily, but with confidence, it explored after its own fashion. Then, puzzled, it withdrew to report.
And since that to which it reported was governed by a set pattern which had not been altered for eons, its only answer
was a basic command reaffirmed. Again it made contact, strove to carry out that order fruitlessly. Where it should have
found easy passage, a clear channel to carry influence to the sleeper's brain, it found a jumble of impressions,
interwoven until they made a protective barrier.

The invader strove to find some pattern, or meaning—withdrew baffled. But its invasion, as ghostly as that had been,
loosened a knot here, cleared a passage there.

Rynch awoke at dawn, slowly, dazedly, sorting out sounds, smells, thoughts. There was a room, a man, trouble and
fear, then there was he, Rynch Brodie, who had lived in this wilderness on an unmapped frontier world for the passage
of many seasons. That world was about him now, he could feel its winds, hear its sounds, taste, smell. It was not a
dream—the other was the dream. It had to be!

Prove it. Find the L-B, retrace the trail of yesterday past the point of the fall which had started all this. Right there was
the slope down which he must have tumbled. Above, he would find the den he had been exploring when the accident
had occurred.

Only—he did not find it. His mind had produced a detailed picture of that rounded depression, at the bottom of which
the strong-jaw lurked. But when he reached the crown of the bluff, nowhere did he sight the mounded earth of the pit's
rim. He searched carefully for a good length, both north and south. No den—no trace of one. Yet his memory told him
that there had been one here yesterday.

Had he fallen elsewhere and stumbled on, dazed, to fall a second time?

Some disputant inside him said no to that. This was where he had regained consciousness yesterday and there was no
den!

He faced away from the river, breathing fast. No den—was there also no L-B? If he had passed this way dazed from a
former fall, surely he would have left some trace.

There was a crushed, browned plant flattened by weight. He stooped to finger the wilted leaves. Something had come
in this direction. He would back-track. Rynch gave a hunter's attention to the ground.

A half-hour later he found nothing but some odd, almost obliterated marks on grass too resilient to hold traces very
long. And from them he could make nothing.

He knew where he was, even if he did not know how he got here. The L-B—if it did exist—was to the west. He had a
vivid mental picture of the rocket shape, its once silvery sides dulled by exposure, canted crookedly amid trees. And he
was going to find it!

Beyond the edge of any conscious sense there was a new stir. He was contacted again, tested. A forest called
delicately in its alien way. Rynch had a fleeting thought of trees, was not aware of more than a mild desire to see what
lay in their shade.

For the present his own problem held him. That which beckoned was defeated, repulsed by his indifference. While
Rynch started at a steady distance to trot towards the east, far away a process akin to a relay clicked into a second set
of impulse orders.

Well above the planet Hume spun a dial to bring in the image of the wide stretches of continents, the small patches of
seas. They would set down on the western land mass. Its climate, geographical features and surface provided the best
site. And he had the very important co-ordinates for their camp already taped in the directo.

"That's Jumala."

He did not glance around to see what effect that screen view had on the other four men in the control cabin of the safari
ship. Just now he was striving to master his impatience. The slightest hint could give birth to a suspicion which would
blast their whole scheme. Wass might have had a hand in the selection of the three clients, but they would certainly be
far from briefed on the truth of any discovery made on Jumala—they had to be for the safety of the whole enterprise.

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The fourth man, serving as his gearman for this trip, was Wass' own insurance against any wrong move on Hume's part.
And the Out-Hunter respected him as being man enough to be wary of giving any suspicion of going counter to the
agreed plan.

Dawn was touching up the main points of the western continent, and he must set this spacer down within a day's
journey of the abandoned L-B. Exploration in that direction would be the first logical move for his party. They could not
be openly steered to the find, but there were ways of directing a hunt which would do as well.

Two days ago, according to schedule, their castaway had been deposited here with a sub-conscious command to
remain in the general area. There had been a slight element of risk in leaving him alone, armed only with the crude
weapons he could manipulate, but that was part of the gamble.

They were down—right on the mark. Hume saw to the unpacking and activating of those machines and appliances
which would protect and serve his civ clients. He slapped the last inflate valve on a bubble tent, watched it critically as it
billowed from a small roll of fabric into a weather resistant, one-room, air-conditioned and heated shelter.

"Ready and waiting for you to move in, Gentlehomo," he reported to the small man who stood gazing about him with a
child's wondering interest in the new and strange.

"Very ingenious, Hunter. Ah—now just what might that be?" His voice was also eager as he pointed a finger to the east.

4

Hume glanced up alertly. There was a bare chance that "Brodie" might have witnessed their arrival and might be coming
in now to save them all a great amount of time and trouble by acting the overjoyed, rescued castaway.

But he could sight nothing at all in that direction to excite any attention. The distant mountains provided a stark, dark
blue background. Up their foothills and lower slopes was a thick furring of trees with foliage of so deep a green as to
register black from this distance. And on the level country was the lighter blue-green of the other variety of wood edging
the open country about the river. In there rested the L-B.

"I don't see anything!" he snapped, so sharply the little man stared at him in open surprise. Hume forced a quick smile.

"Just what did you sight, Gentlehomo Starns? There is no large game in the woodlands."

"This was not an animal, Hunter. Rather a flash of light, just about there." Again he pointed.

Sun, Hume thought, could have been reflected from some portion of the L-B. He had believed that small spacer so
covered with vines and ringed in by trees that it could not have been so sighted. But a storm might have disposed of
some of nature's cloaking. If so Starns' interest must be fed, he would make an ideal discoverer.

"Odd." Hume produced his distance glasses. "Just where, Gentlehomo?"

"There." Starns obligingly pointed a third time.

If there had been anything to see it was gone now. But it did lie in the right direction. For a second or two Hume was
uneasy. Things seemed to be working too well; his cynical distrust was triggered by fitting so smoothly.

"Might be the sun," he observed.

"Reflected from some object you mean, Hunter? But the flash was very bright. And there could be no mirror surface in
there, surely there could not be?"

Yes, things were moving too fast. Hume might be overly cautious but he was determined that no hint of any pre-
knowledge of the L-B must ever come to these civs. When they would find the Largo Drift's life boat and locate
Brodie, there would be a legal snarl. The castaway's identity would be challenged by a half dozen distant and unloving
relatives, and there would be an intense inquiry. These civs must be the impartial witnesses.

"No, I hardly believe in a mirror in an uninhabited forest, Gentlehomo," he chuckled. "But we are on a hunting planet
and not all its life forms have yet been classified."

"You are thinking of an intelligent native race, Hunter?" Chambriss, the most demanding of the civ party, strode up to
join them.

Hume shook his head. "No native intelligence on a hunting world, Gentlehomo. That is assured before the planet is listed
for a safari. However, a bird or flying thing, perhaps with metallic plumage or scales to catch the sunlight, might under
the right circumstances seem a flash of light. That has happened before."

"It was very bright," Starns said doubtfully. "We might look over there later."

"Nonsense!" Chambriss spoke briskly as one used to overriding the conflicting wishes in any company. "I came here for

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a water-cat, and a water-cat I'm going to have. You don't find those in wooded areas."

"There will be a schedule," Hume announced. "Each of you has signed up, according to contract, for a different trophy.
You for a water-cat, Gentlehomo. And you, Gentlehomo Starns, want to make tri-dees of the pit-dragons. While
Gentlehomo Yactisi wishes to try electo fishing in the deep holes. To alternate days is the fair way. And, who knows,
each of you may discover your own choice near the other man's stake out."

"You are quite right, Hunter," Starns nodded. "And since my two colleagues have chosen to try for a water creature,
perhaps we should start along the river."

It was two days, then, before they could work their way into the woods. One part of Hume protested, the more
cautious section of his mind was appeased. He saw, beyond the three clients now turning over and sorting space bags,
Wass' man glanced at the woods and then back to Starns. And, being acutely aware of all undercurrents here, Hume
wondered what the small civ had actually seen.

The camp was complete, a cluster of seven bubble tents not too far from the ship. At least this crowd did not appear to
consider that the Hunter was there to do all the serious moving and storing of supplies. All three of the clients pitched in
to help, and Wass' man went down to the river to return with half a dozen silver-fins cleaned and threaded on a reed,
ready to broil over the cook unit.

A fire in the night was not needed except to afford the proper stage setting. But it was enjoyed. Hume leaned forward
to feed the flames, and Starns pushed some lengths of driftwood closer.

"You have said, Hunter, that hunting worlds never...